


Ghosts

by selenehekate



Series: My Next-Gen Head Canon [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 09:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17201027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selenehekate/pseuds/selenehekate
Summary: Roxanne bumps into Lee Jordan on the streets four years after she's last seen him. Perhaps they're more alike than you'd think...





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> I normally don't include spoilers/warnings at the beginning of my oneshots, but I'm aware this is a squick for some people. This marks the second part of an age-gap relationship saga, though nothing untoward happens when Roxie is underage. All stories that center around Roxie and Lee in this series are clearly marked. You have been warned.
> 
> Story takes place in November 2019

 

I highly recommend you read "[A Maudlin Christmas](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187506)" first, as events from that story are alluded to here.

* * *

 

Roxanne was in Hogsmeade with her cousin, Dominique Weasley, when she saw Lee again.

It was a traditional Hogsmeade weekend in early November, and students ran amok in the town. Roxie and Dominique were leaving the bookstore, which they had visited per Roxie's request, when she spotted him across the street, waving good-bye to a man in a long robe.

For a moment, Roxie watched Lee from afar. He looked a little older than she remembered, lines visible around his eyes, and thinner too. As a distracted Dominique stopped to look inside a shop’s window, Roxie found herself wondering what Lee Jordan was doing in Scotland, of all places. This was the last place she'd expected to find travel-bound Lee; she was sure her parents would have written if they'd known he was back in the country. Maybe they didn't. Maybe he wasn't really back.

There was only one thing for it. Without consulting Dominique, Roxie stepped past the jean-clad younger students running towards Honeydukes and into the street, towards Lee. Her cousin didn’t notice.

"Well, if it isn't Lee Jordan, back from his European travels," she said, a smirk crossing her face. She still remembered the last time they'd spoken. She’d been twelve, and Lee Jordan had dismissed her curiosity about his life, implying she was too childish to understand. Four years later, she wondered if he would still dismiss her. "You are back, aren't you?"

Lee, meanwhile, had an incredulous expression plastered on his face as he looked her up and down. “Roxie? Roxie Weasley?" It was as though he barely recognized her.

At sixteen, Roxie had changed in the years since Lee had left; she knew it. Her basic appearance was the same: latte-colored skin, cherry-colored hair, and eyes the color of devil’s food cake (perhaps she was a little hungry). But her dark red hair had grown thicker, her curls becoming sleeker. Her body had grown more shapely and less childlike, and her intelligent, knowing eyes now matched her maturing face. That wasn't the biggest change in Roxie, though. Now, as a sixth year, she'd grown confident in who she was and what she wanted out of life, and she carried herself with a swagger that most people her age couldn't meet without seeming pretentious or youthfully ignorant. She had grown immensely. She was a different person.

"Would that be a yes?" Roxie asked, folding her arms over her chest. Her pointer finger traced up her arm, unwittingly drawing attention to her bare skin. "Are you back? Or just visiting?"

"I'm back," he said, distracted. "I'm... you've grown up." He couldn't seem to get past that, eyes unusually wide as they traced over his body once more. In the back of her mind, Roxie acknowledged that she should be put off by his attention to her appearance, but she felt more amused than anything else. Here Lee Jordan stood, looking much the same, and yet he could barely recognize her.

Roxie chuckled. "Good to see you again, Lee," she said, stressing his first name. She watched as his eyebrows raised, and she resisted the urge to chuckle. She refused to call him Mr. Jordan any longer. She hated nothing more than when people talked down to her, and she would not show him the respect of addressing him formally because of what he'd said to her last. Implying that she was a child (never mind the fact that she _had_ been a child), that his trauma was too much for her to understand when her own father had battled with sobriety for the first ten years of her life… She wanted him to know they were equals. She wanted him to know that she demanded to be addressed like the adult she almost was.

“Mr. Jordan!" Dominique said, catching up to the pair. "When did you get back?"

"Oh, hello. Dominique,” he said, starting slightly. Roxie was amused to note that Lee didn’t spend more than a second looking over her part-Veela cousin.“Just… just a few days ago."

"A few days, and you still haven't been to see my parents," Roxie said. Her lips were curled into a mocking smile as she said, "They'll be so disappointed with you."

His tone held a note of wonder. "Yes, I imagine so." He gave a shrug of his shoulders and kept his eyes trained on Roxie. "Perhaps I should pay them a visit."

"How did your travels go?" Dominique asked. The girl was oblivious, as always. "It must have been wonderful. My mother said that when her sister left England permanently and began to travel, it took her family ten years to convince Gabrielle to come home and start a family. Why are you back so early?”

Dominique was a lovely blonde girl of sixteen - the same age as Roxie - and she was bitingly bubbly. It was, Roxie mused, exactly what one would expect of a normal sixteen year old girl. Nothing unusual for the age group. Not that this was a problem, of course—there were days Roxie would have sold her soul to have had a normal upbringing—but given that Lee was in awe of how Roxie had changed in four years, perhaps that spoke volumes as to how little her cousins and her peers had grown mentally.

"Perhaps it was simply duller than you'd expected," Roxie added, ignoring her cousin.

"Perhaps I'm done running," Lee said, his voice soft. Roxie's eyes snapped wide at this statement. Sure, their Christmas conversation had been significant in her mind—and in shaping the way that she saw Lee—but she would never have expected the same could be said for him. Running… so she’d been right; he’d left the country to run from his demons.

He spoke quickly, though, before she or Dominique could comment. "No, Europe was lovely, but I'm ready for some... consistency."

"So this is permanent?" Roxie asked, tilting her head to the side.

"Fairly," he conceded. "I'm buying a flat."

"Single bedroom?" Roxie teased. "Spare wardrobe for visitors?"

Lee rolled his eyes. "Some things never change."

"Such as your womanizing ways," Roxie shot back. "Do us all a favor and settle down sometime soon."

"Unlikely," he said with a shake of his head. "Especially since the flat I'm buying is fairly unremarkable. Perfect to vacate and rent out at a moment's notice."

"If you and your broads haven't utterly destroyed it, of course," she said before she could censor herself. At Lee's shocked expression, Roxie wondered if she had crossed a line in alluding to his sex life.

Dominique, bless her, hadn't noticed, though. She was still concerned with the details of the flat. "Oh, where?" Dominique asked, clapping her hands together. "London? I've always wanted to live in London. Or the Swindon area is supposed to have a large magical population. Or-"

"Here, actually," he said, interrupting Dominique as she paused for a breath. "Right outside of Hogsmeade."

She made a face. "Scotland? Really?"

"Interesting choice," were Roxie's words on the matter. "Any reason?"

"It's... close to home. It's affordable and should sell fairly quickly if I want to buy a house. And it reminds me of... a better time," he admitted. His eyes were locked on Roxie’s as he said this, almost contemplatively. He jumped when Dominique spoke next.

"A better time? But it's, like, perfect. Perfect economy, peaceful-"

“I understand," Roxie said softly. She met his gaze head-on, unwilling to look away, even at the cost of her cousin’s confusion.

Lee, for his part, couldn’t look away either, and his voice sounded breathy as he asked, ”Do you?"

“Yes.” And she did understand. She knew he was speaking about the time he was at Hogwarts prior to the war, with her father and her dead uncle Fred. She knew he was speaking about Katie, the girl her mother had once confided that Lee had loved and even proposed to prior to the final battle. The girl who never made it out of the castle alive. He was speaking of a time of humor and hope, a time of practical jokes and mischief, a time where their futures seemed like a distant possibility and not one laden with ghosts and trauma.

Her father and mother both lived with the trauma of the final battle, and she knew more than she should, had known more from an early age. Between her father’s late night drinking and partying and her mother’s early morning lamentations to friends in their kitchen, Roxie could piece together the untold story of her family by the time she was eight—of how her mother had been in love with Fred, not her father. Of how her parents had begun a destructive sexual relationship a few years after the battle. Of how her brother Fred’s conception had led to a shotgun wedding that solved none of their problems. Of how she herself had been conceived in a futile effort to bring stability to their lives.

And so Roxie had watched for twelve years as her parents fought and burrowed deeper into themselves. She learned sorrow and regret from her mother; she learned avoidance and pain from her father. And from her brother, who begged to attend the now-co-ed Beauxbatons (ostensibly to study Charms in-depth but likely to escape the madness), Roxie learned neglect and isolation.

If not for the extended Weasley family and her welcoming aunts, uncles, and cousins, she likely wouldn’t have learned loyalty, love, or forgiveness. It was why, as her father finally stumbled towards sobriety and her mother slowly learned to let go of Fred’s death, Roxie could begin to find peace within her immediate family.

But peace didn’t undo years of emotional damage, and so as Lee Jordan stared at her, asking if she understood what he was running from, Roxie could honestly answer that she did. Lee was running from their memory—Fred and Katie—and now he was coming home to them. It was sick and twisted, and utterly fucked up, but in a way, Roxie understood. She'd watched her father do the same thing on more than one occasion. They were trying to cope with their scars.

Lee was silent as he nodded in response. Though Roxie's focus had drifted from his face, Lee's gaze was still rock solid on Roxie, his eyes studying the girl, scanning back and forth. For the first time in awhile, she felt uncomfortable. "Anyway," Roxie said, looking away. "We should be going. We have to get back to Hogwarts. But... it was good to see you, Lee. Pay my father a visit. He'll want to know you're back."

"I will," he said, his voice gaining strength as he spoke. "I'm sure you'll see a lot more of me now, especially since I'm back in the UK."

"More than never?" Roxie said with a weak grin. Her eyes slid back to his. "Well, that is certainly an improvement."

For the first time since their encounter, Lee Jordan actually smiled. "Roxie." He nodded towards her cousin. "Dominique. See you two around."

"Indeed," Roxie added with a wink. Instantly, she internally berated herself. _What the bloody hell was that?_ she thought. _Was that really necessary?_ Perhaps she felt far too comfortable discussing his past with him if she were in the winking mood. She pressed on, though. "See you, Lee."

"Good-bye, Mr Jordan," Dominique said with a wave as Roxie gripped her elbow and began to pull her away. "What are you doing?" Dominique asked. "What's going on? And why are you calling him Lee?"

Roxie didn't answer, though. She was too busy wondering if perhaps she'd miscalculated how hurt and scared Lee had been four years ago when he'd deflected her innocent questioning with a disparaging remark. Perhaps while her father had found sobriety and begun taking steps towards amending his life and finding peace, Lee Jordan had not. Perhaps… perhaps he was still being haunted by ghosts.

**Author's Note:**

> The conversation alluded to earlier in this chapter took place in my story "A Maudlin Christmas."


End file.
